Former Saints fan favourite John McGinn paid tribute to his Paisley heritage by sharing a throwback picture with Scotland teammate Kenny McLean.
The Ralston academy duo paired up to deliver the knockout blow against Norway in a massive 2-1 win on Saturday which put the nation on track to qualify for Euro 2024 in Germany.
And in the wake of the famous victory, St Mirren legend McGinn shared a snap of the duo celebrating another dramatic late McLean winner – this time against Partick Thistle back in September 2014 – with the caption “run it back”.
The post has already racked up a massive 12,000 likes on Twitter, with many Buddies revelling in the impact of their two former academy stars on the national stage.
Speaking after the potentially decisive victory, McGinn stated he had no doubt his former Buddie would calmly tuck away the winner given the quality he knows the Norwich midfielder possesses.
And the Aston Villa skipper also revealed the sight of Man City superstar Erling Haaland being substituted late on gave his Scotland colleagues a boost during one of the hottest games he’s ever played in.
McGinn said: “We need to give a big shout-out to the substitutes, because they were phenomenal.
“Before then, it was a really poor performance from us on the ball, on as hot a night as I can ever remember playing in. We went behind and had to respond but it wasn’t really happening until Kenny, Billy (Gilmour) and Stuart (Armstrong) all came on and changed the game.
“Kenny’s so under-rated and there was never any doubt he was going to stick it away when the ball came to him.
“It was a really good goal. I don’t know how big Scott McTominay saw me from out on the right, but he pinged a great ball, Dykesy blocked off their defender and to be honest I was going to have a shot before I saw Dyksey out of the corner of my eye and decided to square it instead.
“The big man laid it off lovely, and Kenny’s run was perfect. It couldn’t have been a better end to the night for us.
“It gave us a boost to see one of the best players in the world (Haaland) being taken off, because although they have good players on the bench there’s no one else as good as him.
“When it went to one each and they needed to chase the win again, him not being on the pitch really helped us.”
McGinn and McLean will be hoping they can team up to devastating effect again this evening at Hampden when Scotland look to maintain their stunning start to this qualifying campaign against Georgia.
Having already also toppled Spain and Cyprus, McGinn hopes the extra training Steve Clarke organised ahead of this international break continues to pay off on the pitch.
He said: “We need to back this up with another big result against Georgia.
“Hampden will be bouncing and we need to be right up for it.
“Georgia are a decent team and their win on Saturday night takes them above Norway, so they’re not going to be easy.
“We need to focus on Tuesday night, because there’s no point letting what we’ve achieved here go to waste.
“Taking us away last week before the Norway game turned out to be a great idea, because rather than resting we were training and I think what we managed to do in the last 15 to 20 minutes in Oslo shows the benefits of doing that.
“Keeping fit rather than taking a break was absolutely what we needed – especially when the game was played in these conditions.
“It was so incredibly hot and it took a lot out of you. You needed to be fit enough to keep going right to the end the way we did.”
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